


What Is Sweet To Remember

by AvaRosier



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate, Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-07
Updated: 2013-08-07
Packaged: 2017-12-22 16:28:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/915437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AvaRosier/pseuds/AvaRosier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Just say the word. And don’t lie to me, not after everything I’ve been through. Don’t you dare." She stares him down with a steely determination in her tone that takes even Derek aback.  He is silent for a long moment before he finally tells her one thing.<br/>"Werewolves."</p><p>They have come to destroy you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Is Sweet To Remember

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lia/gifts).



> I am working off some notes I had made when I had access to the book series over Christmas, but I've played a bit with the canon for both the book and the tv show. I don't like the style I ended up writing this in, but I did struggle for so long to meld Rachel to Lydia, and I can only hope I managed to nail it somehow.
> 
> Warning: there is a scene towards the end, involving Peter Hale, that contains possibly triggery content. There is nonconsensual/dubcon touching of a sexual nature. But, ah, without being too spoilery, that's put a stop to before long.

 

 

 

_”From the rising of the sun to the setting, to its rising again, we place what is hard to endure with what is sweet to remember, and find peace.”_

~ Andalite evening ritual

~*~

_“It’s so hard to forget pain, but it’s even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.”_

~ Chuck Palahunik

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

_My name is Lydia Martin._

She dreams about abandoned construction sites, rusted steel beams, and a dying Prince.

_< They have come to destroy you.>_

She dreams of her own deaths. Of polar bears and a human boy’s tears because hawks don’t cry; of a little human child in a blue skating costume trying to scramble her way out of an underground hell, only to be cut down by a terrifying creature with no will to show her mercy.

The little girl had screamed and begged, because that was before she remembered that she had been brave, before she knew that the creature that had killed her had a name-  _Hork-Bajir_.  In her dreams, the Hork-Bajir morphs into a man who is not a man. And then she remembers teeth and claws burning into her side, the world spinning around in a riot of color and sound ( _because Stiles is screaming for her_ ), and she’s more angry that the rough blades of hewn grass are probably staining her satin dress.

Sometimes, though, she dreams of the polar bear, its arm raised high, claws ready to deal her a single killing blow, only for it to become a dark man who has to close his eyes three times before he has the courage to rip her… _his_ …her throat out.

Sometimes she dreams of burning.

_My name is Rachel Berenson._

 

 

 

* * *

 

 Lydia is still in shock, kneeling bare-legged on the burnt and soot-covered floor of the Hale house, and she dimly registers the naked man before her telling Derek that he  _ought to take the poor dear home, it’s been a long night for her_.

She should get angry right now, because it hasn’t just been a long night, it’s been a long few months of thinking she was losing her fucking mind. Of having Peter burrow into her waking dreams, sometimes looking more and more like David.

She is pliant in Derek’s arms as he helps lift her to her feet and guides her out of the cold and dank house.  She suspects he’s more gentle than he ought to be considering she had brought his dead uncle back to life. She knows that much, in spite of her friends’ efforts to keep her in the dark. She had seen the engraving on the basketball trophy, googled the name, and figured out what relationship ‘Peter Hale’ had with the supposed murderer who had wanted Scott and Stiles dead that night they had been trapped in the school.

But why would she hallucinate a comatose man after sustaining an animal attack? The last photo they had of Peter Hale from before the fire looked like the man she thought she remembered that night on the lacrosse field. Claws and teeth.

 Derek stops when they are down the street from her house. It looks like most of the kids have left already, having come down from the drugged high they had been on. She was going to have to come up with one hell of a story come Monday at school. But her mind is her own. She is not a Human-Controller anymore.

"Just say the word. And don’t lie to me, not after everything I’ve been through. Don’t you dare." She stares him down with a steely determination in her tone that takes even Derek aback.  He is silent for a long moment before he finally tells her one thing.

"Werewolves."

 

_< They have come to destroy you.>_

 

 

* * *

_"This is nuts. This whole thing is nuts. Yeerks and spaceships and slugs taking over people’s brains and Andalites and the power to change into animals? Give me a break."_

 

 

* * *

 

Allison's mother is dead, and the others still have no clue that Lydia hasn't been suffering from PTSD or hallucinations. 

She had looked up that word, after she had translated the passage for Allison and her 'online role playing game that battles mythical creatures'. (Lydia was still insulted that Allison had thought such a flimsy excuse would work on her.) And so she recognizes the word on Stiles' cell phone screen.  

_Kanima._

She is tired because Jackson is dead, and everything keeps going wrong. She is tired because she had thought she could have a normal life, a happy life. She had buried enough of Rachel Berenson in the deep, dark recesses of her mind. Lydia Martin was a real person, even if her original body had died and some dead and resurrected girl chose to take Lydia Martin on and settle into her bones.

Lydia Martin probably wouldn't have grown to love clothes and shopping. That was the life that Rachel Berenson should have been able to live. Life is not fair.  But Lydia Martin is frighteningly brilliant. And Rachel had been through so much that she simply...let go. Let herself disappear bit by bit, being absorbed into the consciousness of Lydia Martin. 

Stiles yells at her, even though the effort must be causing the bruises on his cheek and the cut on his lip to hurt even more. He tells her about how death doesn't just happen to you, it happens to everyone around you. He means his mother.  

She knows. She is dead to her family, to her friends. She thinks most of her old friends are also dead by now. She misses her own mother, her sisters. She cannot bring herself to love Anthony and Natalie Martin. 

She recognizes the word,  _Kanima_. And then she's making Stiles take her along to whatever supernatural shit is going down that night. 

She does not say "Let's do it."  But the words are almost on the tip of her tongue.  

 

 

* * *

  _"We can’t go soft, Rachel. We can’t give into emotional attachments. Or to morality. A leader leads because he or she is a law unto themselves. A leader really believes that law will be accepted without question by those whose destiny it is to follow."_

 

 

* * *

 

 "I made some really bad decisions. My grandf-," Allison inhales sharply before she continues. " _Gerard_  manipulated me and I was just so  _tired_ , Lydia. I always knew my family was hiding things from me...but this? Werewolves and Hunters? And right after I found out, Kate died. And she had killed all those people- nearly Derek's entire family. And now my mother's dead and Scott is a werewolf. I thought if I stopped feeling anything, if I just became cold, I could lash out and make it all stop."

Lydia knows by now what happened next. Allison had gone after Boyd and Erica so she could get to Derek. Lydia also knows by now what really happened the night Allison, Stiles, and Jackson had herded her to Scott's home. Derek had thought she was a murderous vengeance-lizard and sent his newly made betas to kill her. And they'd been perfectly willing. They had told themselves that she was dangerous, and that killing her was necessary to keep everyone else safe. Well,  _safer_.

Later on, she will realize that Derek has been fighting a war for a long time, since he was fifteen human years old. And later on, she will realize that it was always bigger than a cocky boy wanting to be with his girlfriend forever.  It was always bigger than Kate Argent taking out a family shielding a nineteen-year old murderer. It doesn't make Derek Hale biting three vulnerable teenagers without telling them the truth about what they are going to face and why he is really doing it...it doesn't make any of that right.  But when she arrives at that point, she will understand, on some level. Because she will think of a boy who had a snake named Spawn and a cat named Megadeath, and remember that she had voted to give him the morphing power. To bring him into the war.   On some level, she could understand that. 

 And so Lydia understands; she knows exactly what Allison is feeling.

 

_"Okay, fine, Rachel. You want to do this, fine. I think you’re the bravest member of the group. I think in a bad fight I’d rather have you on my side than anyone else. But yeah, Rachel, I think there’s something pretty dark down inside you. I think you’re the only one of us who would be disappointed if all this ended tomorrow. But you, Rachel, you love it. It’s what makes you so brave. It’s what makes you so dangerous to the Yeerks."_

 Lydia remembers how it felt to know, even before Jake had turned around, what he was going to ask her to do. That he was ordering her on a mission that she would not return from.

 

When Allison can't stop the hot tears streaming down her face, Lydia sits down on the bed next to her best friend.  She hugs her and can feel the way Allison is holding herself in so tightly even as her body trembles with the need to let it all out, to rage at the unfairness of it all. Allison feels guilty for not telling Lydia what was going on, for shutting her out. Lydia thinks of Melissa Chapman, and she can't bring herself to be angry with Allison anymore.

"It's not your fault. Not what Gerard did, not what your parents did, and certainly not what Kate did. So, you made a mistake. It doesn't mean you're like your family, or that you're weak."

"How can you be sure of that?" Allison asks, chuckling sardonically. She looks over at Lydia with red-rimmed eyes. Okay, so Lydia can understand that from Allison's point of view, she has only been tangentially involved in the whole werewolf business. 

"Because I know you- you write terrible poetry, cry over dogs, and fall in love too fast.   You are brave and you are strong. You are good. And you matter." 

_Because you can be better than I ever was._

 

 

* * *

 

< _Aren’t you going to beg for mercy? Nah, of course not. You’re brave Rachel._ > She can hear his sneer in her mind.  David is in a lion morph, she’s human.  < _That’s okay, > He says. <I’m not a murderer, you know. I wouldn’t kill a human. Now, a bird…a tiger…sure._>

The rage had been blinding; and the grief when she thought Tobias and Jake might be dead.  “Find a place to hide. Because I’ll make you a promise:  _I will kill you, David_.”  

She had become so cruel.  She had jammed a fork against his ear and she had truly wanted to twist it and have the satisfaction of making him scream. 

They'd thought turning David into a _nothlit_ would have been kinder. They were children, teenagers. They had all been afraid to kill, back then. 

< _You're already a **nothlit**. You stopped being human long ago, Rachel. No human could have done what you did to me._ > 

 

You don't want to know what Lydia dreams of doing to Peter Hale.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 Normal is the watchword.

Lydia does not do nothing all summer. She knows she is immune, and that she is able to bring a dead werewolf back to life.  Neither of these are normal reactions to being bitten by a deranged Alpha werewolf. She does not know if this immunity comes from whatever the Ellimist did to meld the consciousness of Rachel Berenson to the empty bones of Lydia Martin...or if it is something intrinsic to Lyd-  _to herself._

She either casually asks questions of Allison, Scott, and Stiles about the things that had been happening in Beacon Hills for the last six months, or she outright threatens bodily harm if information is not forthcoming.  The latter is an intimidation tactic she mostly saves for Stiles.

He does not call her Xena.

She can't help biting out, "you're such a disgusting little toad," in his direction one day when they are sitting in Starbucks with some of the books Stiles had collected on werewolf lore. Her coffee has gone cold and she feels a pang of longing for someone else.

She can almost hear the ghost of a reply, " _kiss me and maybe I'll become a prince._ "  She finds it comforting, in a way, that she is haunted by Marco sometimes.

"Tell me what you know," she asks them, in all seriousness.

She could have walked away, she could have stayed mostly out of it all.

She was never supposed to be in the construction site that night. 

Maybe Lydia Martin likes being important.  Maybe Rachel Berenson still wants to fight.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 Autumn comes along, school starts again, and she keeps losing time.

She wakes up screaming and then she takes a ride only to end up in a place other than where she had been going. And there are dead bodies.

She just  _knows_  the insidious figure she saw in the flames, after she shoved Stiles and Scott out of the way, is the Darach. After they get home from that sham of a cross-country meet, Lydia researches the Motel Glen Capri extensively. She sees the name  _Argent_ , and something begins to click in her head.  Lydia Martin is not only incredibly beautiful, she is incredibly intelligent. 

She keeps doing normal, banal things when school starts. She moves on from Jackson, and from Peter, by getting on top of Aiden.   _Of course,_  he turns out to be a fucking Alpha werewolf. But she can yank his head to the side and expose his neck to her teeth, and it's so erotic to be dominant.  It all changes when Aiden and Ethan help Kali force Derek to kill Boyd. 

Boyd and Erica had just wanted to live. They wanted to be more powerful, they wanted to belong, they wanted control, they wanted to not be alone anymore. Cora is fighting her own war alongside Derek, and she's weeping over Boyd; with these loud, gasping sobs. 

Lydia doesn't know why she keeps drawing that tree.

But she doesn't sit around waiting for someone else to figure it out and tell her what she is, what's happening to her.

Dr. Deaton tells her and Stiles about druids and darachs, oak trees and choices made.

 

The best way Lydia can find, to explain why she keeps losing time, is to read up on thermodynamic asymmetery in time. Because her and Stiles have been looking at the patterns. Maybe it is just apophenia. Scott has been trying to see several moves ahead on the chess set. But maybe entropy has a point.

 

* * *

 

 She dreams of a future that never came to be- of a dying world, a huge Yeerk pool, and cages where no humans cried for help. And then she is back in History class where Ms. Paloma is no longer a skeleton.  She's talking about subjunctive history...the _what if_.

"We can’t second-guess history because events are intertwined in ways we cannot always see.  The world isn’t like math, where one plus one equals two."

A butterfly beats its wings-

 _Danaus Plexippus._  

* * *

 

She thinks the most about what Peter Hale is up to. It's not just personal, her overwhelming desire to kill him. Peter Hale is a snake in the grass. She knew him once as David, and she knows he's played a bigger part in this whole confluence of events than they realize right now.

"Tell me what you know," she pleads.

Scott and Allison tell a different story than Stiles does. They mention the tale of the scorpion. _That's nothing impressive_ , Lydia wants to snort. She could tell them the tale of _Seerow's Kindness_. 

Her friends believe that she's something; they believe that she has some connection to the Darach murders. After she has a mini-freakout in front of Ms. Blake over the disappearance of their history teacher, Scott, Allison, and Stiles try to talk her into going home and not coming to the memorial concert that night.

She has had enough.

 

" _I brought back Peter Hale_ ," she declares into the oppressive silence of the chemistry classroom.

 

She meets each of their eyes in turn, and sees that they do not understand.

"All those times you thought I was losing my mind, writing backwards on the chalkboards, that was him- right there, _so close he could touch you_." Her voice is as harsh as her accusation. "And it wasn't stopping, he was not going to stop. I didn't know what to do. By that point, it was harder to tell where I ended and he began. So I spiked the punch with wolfsbane, and I went after Derek. And that night, he used me to crawl out of the grave."

"Lydia, I..." Allison is sorry, and she is horrified.  Stiles is silent, what does someone say to a confession like that?

Scott... Scott is the one who wraps his arms around her and Lydia realizes she had been crying. 

"I'm sorry," he says, moving back to look her in the eyes. 

"Do you understand now? Whatever it is that I am, I can bring someone back from the dead. I'm going to be important somehow, so don't you dare shut me out, okay? _I'm not useless_." Lydia hates the way her voice trails up at the end, in desperation.

"Of course you're not useless, Lydia," Stiles tells her with a bit of a smirk tugging on the corner of his lips. "You taught us how to make self-igniting Molotov cocktails, which was how we were able to get Peter in the end."

So, she doesn't go home that night. She may not be able to morph anymore, to use the grizzly bear to unleash her fury and the chaotic rage that had burned inside her... but she could choose to stay, to fight in whatever particular way she could in order to help her friends.

 

 

 

* * *

 " _We have to._ "

" _Yes. We have no choice._ "

Jake and Tobias had been wrong.  They did have a choice that night in the construction site. They could have walked away. Even after Peter had used her to claw his way back into the world, Lydia still had a choice.

That's why she tells Scott that she's going to let go, let it happen, and hope that she's able to give Scott enough time to do something about it. As much as she abhors the loss of her bodily autonomy- _and doesn't it just take the cake that this is something that happens, Rachel or Lydia, Animorph or not, all the time_ \- she trusts Scott. A pack is forming around him and she can feel them all pulling together as a team. 

His hand feels so warm and comforting in hers. He reminds her so much of both Cassie and Jake, sometimes.

_I'll do something about it, I swear to god I will._

 

 

* * *

 

"Unbelivable. You have no idea what you are do you?" Jennifer breathes, awe heavy in her voice. "The wailing woman. A _banshee_ , right before my eyes."

And there it is, right out there in the open.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 Lydia dreams of sunlight after darkness.  

 < _If there’s any humanity left in you at all, please kill me._ >

 " _I’m one of the good guys_ ," she insists. " _Promise to disappear and…_ " She cries hard and long, and he was still there, waiting patiently.  " _I don’t know what to do._ "

 

* * *

 

 "I think I understand, in a way, what my parents were trying to do." Allison says, her cadence slowed from two glasses of wine. She's lying sideways on Lydia's bed, on her aconite-colored sheets. 

"My mom always pushed me into things like archery and gymnastics. She was strict, and she usually had sharp words ready for me instead of comfort.  Did I tell you that after I found out about werewolves, my dad kidnapped me and made me think we had both been taken by werewolves and that we were going to be killed?"

Lydia furrows her brows, reaching down to where Allison is so that she can run her fingers over Allison's soft hair. "Hmm-mmm, you mentioned something about that, yes. Shame the guy who timed you had to go and get killed. From the way you described him, you could definitely have enjoyed his awe at being in the presence of Allison Argent, Warrior Princess."

"Lydia! Focus! I'm trying to be profound here, and you're not helping."

"Sorry. Please continue."

Allison tugs at Lydia's oversized sweater before she starts speaking again.  "My great-uncle, Alex, was bitten by an Alpha. That was why he killed himself, back in the seventies. My mother wasn't born into a Hunting family. But it was how her and my father met- my aunt Caroline married my dad's best friend. Dad said that Mom was very sure of herself and proud, and he just had to ask her to dance at the reception. And then everything was history."  Allison sat up for a moment to take another deep swing from her wineglass.

"So, your mom played hard to get? I approve. What did your dad do to change her mind? Undo another button on his shirt?"

Allison snorts before she curls her body onto her side, facing Lydia. And then the sound of her laughter changes, and her chest begins to hiccup with barely restrained tears. 

"I think their lives were brutal. From their perspectives, in order to be able to fight and kill werewolves, they had to turn off certain things in their minds. Empathy, reluctance, kindness. Uncle Rick was bitten by a werewolf before I was born. My dad had to be the one who put him down. And the awful thing is, after meeting Gerard, I think the reason my mom was always so harsh with me was because she was trying to prepare me for dealing with other Hunters."  Allison's eyes shone with unshed tears, with the abject pain of loss.

"I think every time she refused to coddle me when I said I wanted to quit gymnastics because I was scared of hurting myself by falling off the beam, she was trying to prepare me for what I would have to do. Because I'm an Argent, and I can't really escape this world. I'm going to have to fight, I'm going to have to become a killer, even if I only kill werewolves that hurt people. If I didn't become strong enough, I would end up dead."

Lydia doesn't have anything to say to that. She's stopped combing her fingers through Allison's hair.

She's too busy silently crying.

 

 

* * *

" _The key to winning is no mercy, Rachel."_

 " _I don’t know what will happen to you if it all ends someday._ "

 And the drode, the intergalactic trickster himself. With his weak and flimsy hands; the wide set eyes that were intelligent, laughing, crude. The creature who’d once offered her a deal. Only she alone would decide what to do. And only she alone would accept the consequences. 

  _And then what dreams will come, Rachel of the Dark Heart?_

 

* * *

With all the pieces laid out in front of her, Lydia thinks about Jennifer Blake. _Julia_ , she reminds herself. _Her name was Julia Baccari_. What do you do when there are werewolves who have made themselves into monsters and nobody can seem to stop them? You turn yourself into a monster. You try to suppress your morality so you can make the hard choices. The horrible ones.  You sacrifice what you used to believe was right, so that you might save other innocent lives.

Lydia also understands Kate Argent. She _used to be_ Kate Argent. Wild and reckless- a soldier but not a leader.  She's not reckless anymore, however. She's not blonde anymore, either. She is a redhead. She may be a banshee, but that is primarily a defensive ability, not a particularly offensive one.  To a werewolf, she is weak. Her body is vulnerable. 

_"You're just like me, Lydia. Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under it."_

* * *

 

She stands there, a grizzly bear, alone against two lionesses, a cape buffalo, a polar bear, and her cousin in a cobra morph.

She looks at the polar bear and thinks

_He **had**  a bear morph. I  **was**  my bear morph. Experience is very helpful._

_  
_Rachel does what Jake had sent her on this suicide mission to do: she clamps her jaws around Tom's form.  She kills her own cousin.

Visser Three allows her enough time to demorph. She stares him down, her human teeth still digging into the dead cobra.

Her last words to her friends are, " _I love you_."

* * *

 

 "Lydia, my little banshee," Peter drawls from the entryway to her bedroom.  "If you thought lining the exterior of your house with mountain ash was all that was necessary to keep me out, I'm afraid there was a small problem with your sense of _intention_."

Her heart starts pounding, and she is truly, truly terrified.  She is standing before her dresser, staring at the spectre from her nightmares, wearing nothing but her slip of a nightgown. 

Annoyed, she throws the pot of cream blush into her makeup drawer with a loud clatter. She takes out a tube of bright pink lip-gloss and starts to apply the slick onto her lips with shaking hands. Peter is already staring off at some random fleck on her wall, pontificating.

"A _banshee_ , attached to Scott McCall's fledgling pack. A True Alpha and he has a banshee at his beck and call. And _I_ was the one to bite the two of you. I have to say, Lydia, I'm disappointed not enough people are giving me credit for knowing potential when I saw it."

"Did you just come here to torture me with the sound of your voice, or is there something you wanted? I have better things to do." She snaps at him and begins to stalk past him to her computer desk. She doesn't make it there because, of course, Peter reaches out lightning fast and grips her arm in one of his hands so he can pull her body up against his. And then he walks her backwards until she is pressed against the wall with him all along her front.  She can't stop shaking, and she refuses to look at his face.

He runs his clawed fingers ever so softly over the bruises at her throat. "Ah, is that what the mean Darach did to you? I bet you felt absolutely powerless when she had you all tied up like a lamb for the slaughter.  Did you try to cut yourself off from the fear, _Rachel_? Did you try to tell yourself that you were safe, _Rachel_? That the bad stuff only happens to people who are careless or stupid or evil? I bet you wished you'd had your morphing ability, then." He chuckles. 

She feels like a dragonfly held prisoner in a child's hand by its wings. A child who can so easily pluck her wings off for amusement.

"You and I are alike, Lydia," Peter murmurs, sliding the tips of his claws ever so lightly down her chest until he was scraping over her nipple through the satin material of her slip.  The sharp pleasure-agony made her mind go blank for several long seconds. "We live in shades of grey, and we've both done such terrible things. Terrible, but necessary. And we both know what it feels like to have a set of claws coming down upon our throats." His head bent down and kissed the trembling column of her throat. She can't help the moan that escapes from her mouth when he ruts between her spread thighs.

"Is that why you were after Jackson and that one Alpha twin, Aiden, like a bitch in heat? Because deep down, you know you could only be loved by someone who is as much of a monster as you are?"

The sad thing about it all, is that Peter was right. 

"Oh, Lydia," he croons, slipping his hand down her top and cupping a breast. Lydia lets the waves of pleasure suffuse her body, lets her head loll against the wall as she begins to move her hips against his as well.  Her hands come up and press against his shoulders, pushing ineffectually against him. She's crying now, too.  

"That's it, Lydia. Just let go." His breath is a hot puff against her lips.  

"I hate you.  I hate you so much." This is truth.

His lips are a fraction from hers, and so she can practically feel the smirk there.  

"I know."

And then he's kissing her, hard and brutal. She lets herself give in, to fist her hands in his hair so he can't move away from her mouth. Not that he's trying, at any rate.  Her heart feels like it's about to burst out of her body.

And then the kiss begins to slow, to grow sluggish.  Peter slumps against her body and is no longer anchoring her to the wall. When he falls to his knees, confusion in his blue eyes, Lydia uses her knee to force the momentum of his body backwards.  She is breathing hard and her lip-gloss is all messed up.

Men, she thinks to herself, just never seem to understand how vulnerability can be used to trap them. And werewolves just never seem to understand that those who are physically weaker than them are no less dangerous. 

She looks down at him, and she thinks her expression must be blank.  "Kanima venom in the lip gloss. What's the use of being immune if you can't weaponize your own body?" She asks him. Rhetorically, of course, since he can't talk right now, with the paralysis spreading throughout his frame. Well, since she's got an captive audience...  Lydia flips her long hair over her shoulder.

"My turn to talk, your turn to listen, _Peter_." She drawls as she steps over to the other side of his prone form. His eyes are able to follow her movement. He looks so put out, she can't help laughing. "I did some research into the banshee mythos, and what kept coming up often was that the banshee was a manifestation of the Morrigan- the black raven of death and rebirth, they call her."  Kneeling over his body, so he could continue to watch her face, she begins to quote:

"' _Because she is the pathway, the vast network of reincarnation compressed into a cloudy mirror, she can guide the soul as she chooses. She needs only to change the pathways. Usually she is a subtle mist, but on the battlefield, she is storm clouds and thunder, the hag screaming for the dead, and the black death-horse which gallops through the sky carrying its newly deceased rider.'_ Poetic, huh?" She smiles without real emotion, before refocusing on the man before her. 

"You used me to cut a pathway to resurrection. I heard the re-telling of the little tale you told Stiles, about Paige and Derek. And I thought to myself, that doesn't sound like a Peter Hale who would have been unaware that Kate Argent was gunning for your nephew. And when I did the research into what was happening ten years ago, thirty-five years ago, and then six years ago... I began to see an answer about why the Hales were targeted like that, an answer that was just too horrific to contemplate.  Gerard told tales about the scorpion and the turtle, so tell me, Peter, why we should wade into this war when we know you're going to sting us somehow? I am neither a frog nor a turtle."

" _You...need...me_ ," he manages to grind out.

Lydia shrugs. "There's an awful lot of people who are dead that we need. So, you know what? _I. Really. Don't. Care._ "

The Morrigan manifests herself in a myriad of animal forms. Ravens, wolves, vultures, or jackals. Lydia only found out that she was a banshee several nights ago, so she does not know much about what she can do, let alone how to shape-shift. But if Scott can become a True Alpha by force of will, through his _intent_ , then Lydia has the advantage of having very intimate memories of what it feels like to morph her body into something else.  She does know how, she just had to believe that she could.

And she can.

Morrigans don’t usually shift into bears. But Morrigans have never been Lydia Martins (who used to be Rachel Berensons) until now. 

Peter is afraid, as her form ripples and shifts into her old friend, the grizzly bear.  She hates him, but she understands that in certain respects, he's no better than she.  That's not why she is going to kill him. Lydia is going to kill him because she can see ten moves ahead on the chessboard now, and he is too much of a danger to the people she loves. She is doing this so that Scott will not have to. Something was perverted when Peter was resurrected, a string in reality was tugged out of balance.  

This is her being merciful.

The bear stands over him, opens her jaws, and clamps her teeth into flesh and sinew.  And then for Peter Hale, it's over.  The bear ripples and shifts back into the form of Lydia Martin, blood red all over her mouth and chin.

What do you know, she’s got another snake in her mouth.

 

* * *

 

She lies in bed the next morning, and thinks of all the dark things that she has done, that she no longer has the luxury of regretting. Okay, so she won’t have a completely normal life, but maybe in a way that was a good thing. 

She properly disposed of Peter's body last night. There is a rug over the bloodstain in her room, but she has time to deal with that. The total lunar eclipse is happening tomorrow night, and she knows that this is when the big battle, as it were, is going to happen. She suspects that, because the Alpha pack keeps referring to her as being important to Scott, she will be used as a pawn for leverage. 

She was never supposed to be at the construction site. Her presence tipped the scales.  As far as they know, she's just a sixteen year old girl who just found out she was a banshee.

There is a dip in the mattress behind her, and Lydia rolls over slowly in confusion.

" _Marco_?"

"Got it in one, Xena. I gotta say, you're really rocking the bedhead here. Totally sexy." He looks just like she remembers him last. A teenager with the eyes of an old man. But smirking, same as always. She doesn't get annoyed. She sighs because she understands, now, what this means.

"You're dead, aren't you?"

Marco settles back against the pillow next to hers. "'Fraid so. I think you're the only one left, now."

Lydia furrows her brow, and tries to breathe through the pang of sorrow. "I can guess about Jake, Tobias, and Ax.  But what about Cassie? I thought she would have stayed behind."

"She did. I think it got to be a bit too much.  One day, she morphed into a dolphin and took off. She ran into Aftran and they talked for hours."  Marco turns his head until he can see her reaction.  "What, no tears?  Not even for her?"  

Lydia smiles a bit tremulously at her old friend.

“You and I both know there are worse fates.  And besides, in a way, Rachel did the same. I am Lydia Martin, but a different Lydia Martin than would’ve existed had she never ran into the Yeerks. Rachel let go, she became me.” Marco looks so sad at that, and Lydia begins to understand.  For all they had squabbled, they usually understood each other's motives and choices, and they had ended up on the same side in agreement more often than not. 

"And now you're some sort of Priestess of Death. I gotta say, I'm impressed. I hope it's not all gone to your head." He smiles at her, and she realizes how much she has missed him.  "Total lunar eclipse tomorrow night, what are you going to do? Storm into battle with the grizzly and rip the Alpha pack to pieces?"

"No, not this time. I'll shift to give Scott the advantage of surprise.  But I think it's going to have to come down to the others. I'm going to tell Scott, Stiles, and Allison.  Not all of it, there isn't enough time for that and..."  she pauses for a moment.  "And I think I want to let most of Rachel go, give her some measure of peace. I'm going to survive this battle, and I'm going to live. I'm going to go to some overpriced Ivy League college and get my Fields Medal."

Marco chuckles good-naturedly at her and the two of them lie there in Lydia's bed, basking in the sunlight peeking in through the open blinds of her window.  It's not awkward, they've been through too much for it to be. He turns back to her, serious all of the sudden.

"We were young then, but later on I would sometimes wonder…you and-“ he stops, steels himself. “Rachel and I.”

In the moment after her death, when she was floating in between realities, and the Ellimist had come to her, she had asked him if her life and her death had mattered. But in that moment, Rachel had just wanted so desperately to live. She can still remember how it tasted on her tongue- the rage and the serenity. 

And so Lydia Martin raises herself up onto one elbow until she is looking down at Marco. She is absolutely certain, because she is Lydia Martin, that the effect of the sun shining behind the curtain of her hair makes her look like she has a halo. She hopes she looks like heaven to him right now.  

Lydia Martin reaches down and rests her palm against his cheek.  "So did I."

 

 _So did I._  

 

 


End file.
